


A Long Way Down

by glimmerglanger



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Mandalore, Post-Episode: s05e20 The Wrong Jedi, Prompt: Don't Move, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-09 18:10:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20999138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glimmerglanger/pseuds/glimmerglanger
Summary: Ahsoka didn’t anticipate how much it would hurt, seeing people she knew again on Mandalore. But, oh, something sliced under her skin, barbs dragging along bones, when she stepped out to greet the troopers disembarking from their transport and saw Rex’s familiar helmet.





	A Long Way Down

Ahsoka didn’t anticipate how much it would hurt, seeing people she knew again on Mandalore. But, oh, something sliced under her skin, barbs dragging along bones, when she stepped out to greet the troopers disembarking from their transport and saw Rex’s familiar helmet.

She’d grown in her time away. She was of a height with them all, montrails well above their heads as they sharpened with the coming of adulthood. She’d changed.

They hadn’t, not really. She saw that when Rex removed his helmet and stepped crisply forward, snapping off a salute. He said, “Commander, didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I’m not a commander anymore,” she told him, searching his face for new carelines, new scars, searching his eyes to see if they were changed. They didn’t look to be. By the Force, she hoped they weren’t. She swallowed, heavily.

He shrugged with one shoulder, mouth quirking up in the corner. “You are to us,” he said, and frowned out across the landscape around them. “You here to help us out, then?”

#

Ahsoka wasn’t _entirely_ sure why she was on Mandalore. She had no where better to be, perhaps. The planet was important to Obi-Wan, and so it was important to Anakin, and so it was important to her. And she had a feeling, suffused through her, a brush of foreknowing from the Force, that she ought to be there.

She explained that as best she could to Rex, as they moved into the cave system that should, allegedly, allow them to reach their goal without drawing too much enemy attention. He nodded, offering no clue what he made of the explanation, and said, “Well, I’m glad you’re here. We missed you, kid.”

Her throat closed again, tight around all the things she missed, the familiarity of figures clad in white armor all around her, the similar-but-different push of their Force signatures, _conversation_ on her missions.

She’d gotten used to working in quiet.

She said, when her throat worked again, “You, too.”

#

The cave system provided a challenge, one Ahsoka thought had been severely under-represented. The entire thing was full of narrow passages and sudden open spaces, often passable only on a thin rim of stone. There were plunging pits that opened underfoot without warning and some large chambers that showed no visible bottom.

The air around them grew close and tight. Sweat clung under her clothing; there was little ventilation in the caves and the physical activity was a strain.

Still, all of the discomfort was not enough to distract her thoughts. They churned around, as they had since she’d left the Temple. She wanted to know so many things. She wanted to know how Anakin was, but the thought of asking after him felt like shoving fingers into an open wound.

She asked, instead, as they navigated a tunnel with a stone wall on one side and a drop into nothingness on the other, sticking to a path that left them barely enough room to pass through if they turned sideways, “How--how has Master Obi-Wan been?” Because that would tell her how Anakin had been, in a roundabout way.

Rex grunted a bit from behind her. “Busy,” he said. “But alright. They’re both alright.” He added, after a moment. “They miss you. We all miss you.”

Ahsoka swallowed. She did not say _I miss you all, too,_ because at that moment something shifted under her foot, and she felt a flash of warning through the Force, and it turned out - because of course it did - that the cave system had been mined, to beat all else.

She pushed the explosion away, saving her leg. The force of it rushed off, down the passage, setting off additional mines with horrible, echoing bursts of sound that were trapped in the enclosed space. The caves shook. Something fell from the ceiling, something heavy and unseen, something that hit her head and sent her back, back off the side of the narrow walkway.

She reached out, fingers sliding across smooth armor, feeling a hand snagging at her, grabbing the strap of her shirt. The fabric snapped. Her head struck something else in the dark. She fell, weightless, as blinding white and then blackness took her.

#

Ahsoka woke to a sharp, terrible pain in her head and left arm. There were other, lesser pains scattered across her body. She was… lying on something. Something hard and cold. It was dark. There were sounds, difficult to make clear, somewhere far away, and a light, above her.

She blinked, tasting blood in her mouth, and shifted. “Ahsoka!” Rex, that was Rex’s voice. So he hadn’t died in the explosions, then. And neither had she. Where _was_ she, then? She braced a hand on the ground. “Don’t move!”

The order made no sense. She couldn’t get out of… wherever she was, if she didn’t move. She rolled off of her stomach, intending to look upward, find her feet, and felt, at her back, a tremendous expanse of nothing.

She hung over it, weightless, hearing a punched-out curse from above, seeing a flash of movement, light glinting off white armor in the dark, rushing closer, and then gravity wrapped around her, yanking her down.

Her stomach swooped out. She reached out desperately with the Force. Something else caught her, first.

There was an impact on the small shelf she’d been lying on, there was an arm, suddenly, around her chest, yanking her hard against smooth armor, crushing the breath from her and arresting her fall. Her body bent for a moment, head and legs still trying to fall, before she jerked forward, curling around her rescuer.

She wrapped arms tight around armored shoulders, her breath gone loud and uneven, drawing her legs up, up away from the yawning abyss.

“Sithspit!” Rex panted, scrambling back, still pinning her close. “I told you not to move!”

“I…” she blinked. The world wouldn’t _quite_ focus. She’d been hit in the head several times, if she remembered correctly. “You did,” she agreed, finally. She should really let go, but her limbs were all shaky from adrenaline and she could remember the feeling of nothing under her, nothing but a yawning, hungry abyss. “What happened?”

He shook his head. She couldn’t see him well in the dark, not even with her vision. Light came down to them from above, along with the faint voices of other troopers. “Someone mined the place,” he said, shifting as though to stand. It was an awkward movement with them still grappling at one another, and he hissed, taking his weight off of his right leg.

She realized, only then, that there was a rope tied around him, extending upward into the dark. “You’re hurt,” she said, her thoughts slowly coming up to speed. “You jumped down.”

“Didn’t have much choice,” he said, releasing his grip, finally, hands going to the knot in the rope. She really ought to stop holding onto him. She worked her arms free and gripped at his arm, instead, since the world wouldn’t stop moving but at least he was stable. “Since you think ‘don’t move’ means ‘roll off into a kriffing bottomless pit.’ I was going to just rapple down.”

He handed over the rope. She blinked at it, and he swore again in the dark. “How hard did you hit your head?” he demanded, hands on her, pulling the rope around her and securing it. 

“Pretty hard,” she admitted. Hard enough that the world was still wobbling around a bit, as though it had drank too much and decided to make her pay for it. “But I’ll be fine. I’m not going to slow us down.”

He went still for a moment. She could see light reflecting off of his eyes, the edges of his armor. “Don’t--” He said, and cut himself off. She heard him swallow. “We’ll worry about the mission after we’re out of these kriffing caves.” He tugged on the rope, three sharp jerks, and said, “See you at the top.”

“What--?” she said, but by then she was already being lifted, dragged up the side of the cliff she’d been thrown down. The rock scrapped at her until she shook enough sense back into her mind to steady the ascent with the Force.

It was a long way down, she realized. A terribly long way to jump.

Familiar hands pulled her over the edge at the top. Smiling faces greeted her, happy to bring her back into the fold, to watch her back, the way she hadn’t had anyone do since she’d left. She hadn’t allowed herself to think about how much she missed it, not until then, with her head swimming and the smell of smoke on the air.

She swallowed and shivered, watching the other troopers throw the rope back down for Rex. She wondered how she was going to leave it all behind again, when this mission was over.


End file.
